Quotes about gain (1681 quotes, page 12)

“Our Constitution has raised certain barriers against too hasty change. I believe such provision is wise. I doubt if there has been any change that has ever really been desired by the people which they have not been able to secure. Stability of government is a very important asset. If amendment be made easy, both revolution and reaction, as well as orderly progress, also become easy. The nation has lost little, but has gained much, through the necessity of due deliberation. The pressing need of the present day is not to change our constitutional rights, but to observe our constitutional rights.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

People , Change

“When men have been deprived of faith and have been taught to hate work, so that they see it as an unbearable burden which provides illicit gain for crooked exploiters, then nothing is left but to go into the squares and shout the inner void which devours them, until they look like lost souls. Man reduced to a mere passage for food faces despair as soon as food becomes scarce or tasteless.”

Aldo Palazzeschi book Roma

Page 53, "Checco".
Roma (1953)

Men , Hate , Faith , Food

“Shortly after the British government had protested Hitler's violation of the military clauses of the Versailles Treaty on March 16 and then joined Italy and France in proclaiming their determination to uphold the sanctity of treaties, it had, behind the backs of its two Stresa allies, negotiated a naval agreement which violated the naval clauses of the Versailles Treaty and gave Hitler the right and encouragement to build all the warships his shipyards could construct for at least ten years.* The Naval Pact was signed in London on June 18, 1935, without the British government having the courtesy to consult with France and Italy, or later, to inform them of the secret agreements which stipulated that the Germans could build in certain categories more powerful warships than any the three Western nations then possessed. The French regarded this as treachery, which it was. They saw it as a further appeasement of Hitler, whose appetite grew on concessions. And they resented the British agreeing, for what they thought a private gain, to scrap further the peace treaty and thus add to the growing overall military power of Nazi Germany.”

William L. Shirer book The Collapse of the Third Republic

The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

Secret , Peace

“If the resident zoologist of Galaxy X had visited the earth 5 million years ago while making his inventory of inhabited planets in the universe, he would surely have corrected his earlier report that apes showed more promise than Old World monkeys and noted that monkeys had overcome an original disadvantage to gain domination among primates. (He will confirm this statement after his visit next year—but also add a footnote that one species from the ape bush has enjoyed an unusual and unexpected flowering, thus demanding closer monitoring.)”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"The Declining Empire of Apes", p. 288
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

World , Flowers , Universe

“Gradually we began [ De Stijl-artists in The Netherlands, 1918] to present a closed front. By working there had been created not only a clarity in the collective consciousness of our group, but we had gained a certainty, which made it possible for us to define our collective attitude towards life and to perpetrate it according to the requirements of the period... As the world war [ World War I ] was coming to an end, we all came to feel the need of securing an interest in our efforts beyond the narrow boundaries of Holland.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote in Neue Schweizer Rundschau, 1929, p. 172 (Van Doesburg); as quoted in De Stijl 1917-1931 - The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jaff001stij01_01/jaff001stij01_01_0003.php, J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam, 1956, p. 17
Van Doesburg is looking back on the starting years of De Stijl-movement
1926 – 1931

Life , War , World , Feeling

“The victory of Christ gained us the kingdom of grace, the kingdom of heaven. Easter is the sky banner flag, the flag of eternity, the victory blowing over the gates of the Holy City of Jerusalem.”

Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) Silesian scientist and Augustinian friar

Excerpt from a sermon on Easter delivered by Mendel, found in Folia Mendeliana (1966), Volume 1-6, Moravian Museum in Brünn.
Sermon on Easter
Original: Der Sieg Christi hat uns das Reich der Gnade gewonnen, das Himmelreich. Osterfahne wird zur Himmelsfahne, zur Flagge der Ewigkeit, die siegreich weht über den Toren der Heiligen Stadt Jerusalem

Victory , Christ

“There is but one alternative for Turkey. Either African barbarism, under Arabian direction, will burst around its head like an avalanche, or else it must re-establish strong leadership, thus putting twenty million heroes between itself and Africa and gaining a breathing spell for the accomplishment of its social regeneration.”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954) 12th President of Turkey from 2014

As said during the EU-Turkey Summit

Strong

“However, in that autobiography Hobson did confess that he now thought that the emphasis on economic causation in Imperialism: A Study was overdone and that more emphasis should have been placed on the 'lust for power' with economic gains seen as a means of exercising power rather an end in themselves.”

Peter Cain (1958) figure skater

Source: J. A. Hobson's Imperialism: A Study: A Centennial Retrospective (2002), p. 3-4.

Exercises , Study

“You can't gain one thing without loosing something else.
You can try to catch time, but try to catch a moment, it's better.
Days pass, and months go by
And the years come, and a decades gone
It always feels like times are ending
But they go on, and on, and on, and on.”

Ross Mintzer (1987) American musician and performer

Lyrics to “Lost In America" (July 17, 2013) http://genius.com/Ross-mintzer-band-lost-in-america-lyrics/
Song lyrics

Feeling , Time

“It became increasingly evident to me that God ordains times of illness so that they can be a time of inner recollection for those who are afflicted by them, an opportunity to recognize better what is going wrong in their lives, to take stock of their daily lives from the distant perspective of a hospital stay, to gain a clearer view of their problems and thereby become better able to master them. To this end discussion is important, which means that the physician ought to be a person of prayer who always has at hand a full supply of possibilities to help.”

Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) Swiss doctor and mystic

The Neergard Affair, p. 357
My Early Years (1968)

God , Problem , Affliction , Distant

“In so far as gaining citizenship rights and opportunities for the unfettered development of the African people, who will deny that thirty years of my life have been spent knocking in vain, patiently, moderately and modestly at a closed and barred door?”

Albert Lutuli (1898–1967) South African politician

The Road to Freedom is via the Cross (1952)

Life , People

“He weights losses about twice as much as gains, which is normal.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 26, "Prospect theory", page 288 (ISBN 9780141033570).

Loss

“This enlarged view of the radical cause … allows us to connect leftism and modernism, the radical politics of institutional reform and the radical politics of personal relations, a political vision obsessed with issues of dependence and domination and a moral vision concerned with the inability of the individual to gain practical, emotional, or even cognitive access to other people without forfeiting his independence.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Social Theoryː Its Situation and Its Task (1987), p. 7

People , Dependency , Personality

“Engels feared that the Socialists, in order to gain adherents in the electoral struggles rapidly, would make promises which were contrary to Marxist doctrine. The antisemites told the peasants and the small shopkeepers that they would protect them from the development of capitalism. Engels thought that an imitation of this procedure would be dangerous, since, in his opinion, the social revolution could only be realised when capitalism had almost completely destroyed the small proprietors and small industries; if the Socialists, then, endeavoured to hinder this evolution, they would ultimately compromise their own cause.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Reflections on Violence, London: UK, George Allen & Unwin, (reprinted in Saxony 1925) p. 180

Fear

“this third period (as it may be termed) of my mental progress, which now went hand in hand with hers, my opinions gained equally in breadth and depth, I understood more things, and those which I had understood before, I now understood more thoroughly. I had now completely turned back from what there had been of excess in my reaction against Benthamism. I had, at the height of that reaction, certainly become much more indulgent to the common opinions of society and the world, and more willing to be content with seconding the superficial improvement which had begun to take place in those common opinions, than became one whose convictions on so many points, differed fundamentally from them. I was much more inclined, than I can now approve, to put in abeyance the more decidedly heretical part of my opinions, which I now look upon as almost the only ones, the assertion of which tends in any way to regenerate society.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/230/mode/1up p. 230

World , Parting , Way

“I said, “I am a soldier, grown old and tired and confused. I have been fighting since before you were born. And I have yet to see anything gained.””

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 12, “The Plain of Fear” (p. 506)

Fight

“Planning is to be based on the democratic approach and method. There should, therefore, be definite place for voluntary effort…a substantial advance should be made towards solving the problems of unemployment. At the same a large increase is the supply of consumer goods should be secured through cottage and small scale industries…The Socialist pattern implies a large and growing public sector in the national economy…And economy based on the socialistic pattern does not preclude the existence of a private sector, particularly in agriculture and small scale industries…In the public and private sectors alike, the relations of workers to management should be such as would give to them a distinctive role and a share in the making of decisions affecting the enterprise…In any case, a series of measures will have to be adopted to eliminate speculative and unearned gains…Special attention will have to be given to the elimination of conspicuous consumption…”

Gulzarilal Nanda (1898–1998) Prime Minister of India

As Panning Minister drafting the Second Fiver Year Plan, in 1955, p. 49.
Gulzarilal Nanda: A Life in the Service of the People

Problem , Decision , Effort

“These futile [Israeli-Palestinian] negotiations are a waste of time and opportunities. The Zionists buy time and gain more opportunities, as the Palestinians, the Arabs, and the Muslims lose time and opportunities, and they get nothing out of it. We can see how this dream has dissipated. This dream has always been an illusion… This [Palestinian] Authority was created by the Zionist and American enemies for the sole purpose of opposing the will of the Palestinian people and its interests… No reasonable person can expect any progress on this track. Either [you accept] the Zionists and everything they want, or else it is war. This is what these occupiers of the land of Palestine know — these blood-suckers, who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.”

Mohamed Morsi (1951–2019) 5th President of Egypt

Morsi in 2010, as quoted by Rod Freidman in Egypt’s Morsi, in 2010 interviews posted online, called Zionists ‘bloodsuckers’ and descendants of pigs, urged to sever all ties with Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/egypts-morsi-in-2010-statements-posted-online-called-zionists-bloodsuckers-and-descendants-of-pigs-urged-to-sever-all-ties-with-israel/, Times of Israel (4 January, 2013)

War , People , Dreams , Time

“The great voice of America does not come from the seats of learning, but in a murmur from the hills and the woods and the farms and the factories and the mills, rolling on and gaining volume until it comes to us the voice from the homes of the common men. Do these murmurs come into the corridors of the university? I have not heard them.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Address to Princeton University alumni, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (April 17, 1910); reported in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Arthur S. Link (1975), vol. 20, p. 365
1910s

Men , Home , Learning , Universe

“The charlatan takes very different shapes according to circumstances; but at bottom he is a man who cares nothing about knowledge for its own sake, and only strives to gain the semblance of it that he may use it for his own personal ends, which are always selfish and material.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

“Similes, Parables and Fables” Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. 2, § 394
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851)

Knowledge , Personality , Selfishness

“Of course, we are applying advances in technology. But when you use those advances just to boost the processing power, the trade-off is that you increase power consumption, make the machine more expensive and make developing games more expensive. When I look at the balance of that trade-off -- what you gain and what you lose -- I don't think it's good. Nintendo is applying the benefits of advanced technology, but we're using it to make our machines more power-efficient, quieter and faster to start. And we're making a brand-new user interface. I think that way of thinking is the biggest difference.”

Satoru Iwata (1959–2015) Japanese video game programmer and businessman

Q&A: Video-game industry maverick promises a Revolution, 2007-03-03, Bishop, Todd, 2005-05-20, Seattle Post-Intelligencer http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/225097_e3iwata20.html,

Way , Game , Thinking

“Russia's leaders, rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power, have rejected democratic ideals and the obligations of a responsible power. They invaded a small, democratic neighbor to gain more control over the world's oil supply, intimidate other neighbors, and further their ambitions of re-assembling the Russian empire.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2008, (2008)

World , Wealth

“It takes intelligence and training, self-discipline and fine-sensibility, to gain renewed life through leisure occupation. America now suffers spiritual poverty, and art must become more fully American life before her leisure can become culture.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Painting and Culture' p. 56
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Life , Art , Intelligence , Suffering

“We cannot rely exclusively on military power to assure our long-term security. Lasting peace is gained as justice and democracy advance.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Remarks on U.S.-British relations and foreign policy (November 2003)

Peace , Justice , Democracy

“Let us imagine that an absolutely unbiased investigator on another planet, perhaps on Mars, is examining human behavior on earth, with the aid of a telescope whose magnification is too small to enable him to discern individuals and follow their separate behavior, but large enough for him to observe occurrences such as migrations of peoples, wars, and similar great historical events. He would never gain the impression that human behavior was dictated by intelligence, still less by responsible morality.”

Konrad Lorenz book On Aggression

Source: On Aggression (1963), Ch. XIII : Ecce Homo!

War , People , Behavior , Imagination

“I do not believe that the Great Society is the ordered, changeless, and sterile battalion of the ants. It is the excitement of becoming—always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting, and trying again—but always trying and always gaining.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Inaugural address (1965)

“More than ten million women march to work every morning side by side with the men. Steadily the importance of women is gaining not only in the routine tasks of industry but in executive responsibility. I include also the woman who stays at home as the guardian of the welfare of the family. She is a partner in the job and wages. Women constitute a part of our industrial achievement.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover (1928)

Women , Men , Family , Home

“In one essential point, I fear, we are all deficient: they are nowhere sufficiently instructed. I am far from recommending it to you, at once to set them all free; because to do so would be an heavy loss to you, and probably no gain to them: but I do entreat you to make them some amends for the drudgery of their bodies by cultivating their minds. … though they still continue to be your slaves, they shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

Jonathan Boucher (1738–1804) English minister

[Boucher organised education for his own slaves, and baptised many others into the Anglican faith, on one occasion over 300 in a single day]
"A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution" (London, Robinson, 1797)

God , Children , Fear , Loss

“Nobody can credibly promise to bring the old jobs back; what you can promise — and Mrs. Clinton did — are things like guaranteed health care and higher minimum wages. But working-class whites overwhelmingly voted for politicians who promise to destroy those gains.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

The New York Times Columns, The Populism Perplex (November 25, 2016)

Health

“After so many great men have worked on this subject, I almost do not dare to say that I have discovered the universal principle upon which all these laws are based, a principle that covers both elastic and inelastic collisions and describes the motion and equilibrium of all material bodies.
This is the principle of least action, a principle so wise and so worthy of the supreme Being, and intrinsic to all natural phenomena; one observes it at work not only in every change, but also in every constancy that Nature exhibits. In the collision of bodies, motion is distributed such that the quantity of action is as small as possible, given that the collision occurs. At equilibrium, the bodies are arranged such that, if they were to undergo a small movement, the quantity of action would be smallest.
The laws of motion and equilibrium derived from this principle are exactly those observed in Nature. We may admire the applications of this principle in all phenomena: the movement of animals, the growth of plants, the revolutions of the planets, all are consequences of this principle. The spectacle of the universe seems all the more grand and beautiful and worthy of its Author, when one considers that it is all derived from a small number of laws laid down most wisely. Only thus can we gain a fitting idea of the power and wisdom of the supreme Being, not from some small part of creation for which we know neither the construction, usage, nor its relationship to other parts. What satisfaction for the human spirit in contemplating these laws of motion and equilibrium for all bodies in the universe, and in finding within them proof of the existence of Him who governs the universe!”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Les Loix du Mouvement et du Repos, déduites d'un Principe Métaphysique (1746)

Wisdom , Men , Law , Beauty

“Shine, ye stars of heaven,
On a world of pain!
See old Time destroying
All our hoarded gain;
All our sweetest flowers,
Every stately shrine,
All our hard-earned glory,
Every dream divine! Shine, ye stare of heaven,
On the rolling years!
See how Time, consoling,
Dries the saddest tears,
Bids the darkest storm-clouds
Pass in gentle rain,
While upspring in glory
Flowers and dreams again!”

Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864) English poet and songwriter

"Shining Stars".
Legends and Lyrics: A Book of Verses (1858)

Pain , World , Dreams , Star

“Should swim along, staying and conquering
In this complex ocean of life with desire not attaching.
Lovingly in this birth, like a lotus leaf on a drop of rain
Singing Rama’s name, those who want to win and gain.
Like the cashew nut on its fruit, just touching the life path
Not keeping any desire, those devoted to the brave Srinath.
Like a fish that grabs the bait meat and gets hooked sadly
Not getting cheated, thinking of Purandara Vittala, the Lord only.”

Purandara Dasa (1484–1564) Music composer

In this three examples are cited by Das cautioning against desire as quoted here [Narayan, M.K.V., Lyrical Musings on Indic Culture: A Sociology Study of Songs of Sant Purandara Dasa, http://books.google.com/books?id=-r7AxJp6NOYC&pg=PA79, 1 January 2010, Readworthy, 978-93-80009-31-5, 77]

Life , Birth , Thinking , Fish

“Peace is victorious always and for ever. Do you remember that aggression gained success and was not crushed by the last blow? Aggression, whether collective or unilateral, is inevitably to be crushed. If you just glance at courts and judges you will see that these courts and judges were formed to crush aggression or anyone who things of aggression. These courts and judges are only working for the sake of peace and ending aggression. This noble idea should prevail all over the world.”

Abd al-Karim Qasim (1914–1963) Prime Minister of Iraq

Speech delivered at the second congress of the peace partisans (April 14, 1959).
Principles of the 14th July Revolution (1959)

World , Peace , Idea , Success

“Everywhere in the world people were expecting the latter coming of one or another kickshaw messiah who would remove the discomforts which they themselves were either too lazy or too incompetent to deal with; and nobody had anything whatever to gain with electing for peculiarity among one's fellow creatures and a gloomier outlook.
Even Coth saw that.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Book Five : "Mundus Vult Decepi", Ch. XXVII : Fond Motto of a Patriot
The Silver Stallion (1926)

People , World

“For every apparent gain, in short, we now observe a balancing danger. This is the world we have created.”

Mark Kingwell (1963) Canadian philosopher

Source: The World We Want (2000), Chapter 4, Spaces And Dreams, p. 165.

World

“Her iron will won international respect. Her unabashed femininity gained women’s. Margaret Thatcher was a lady’s lady.”

Louise Burfitt-Dons (1953) Activist, writer, blogger

Speech to CWCC, London (April 2013)

Women

“I always think twice before reading the biography of a writer I admire. Biographers sometimes latch onto small details, unreliable eyewitness accounts, character traits that appear puzzling or disappointing – all of which is like the crackling sound that messes with radio transmissions, making the music and the voices impossible to hear. It is only by actually reading his books that we gain intimacy with a writer. This is when he is at his best and he is speaking to us in a low voice without any of the static.”

Patrick Modiano (1945) French writer

From Nobel Lecture (2014)

Books , Music , Disappointment , Thinking

“So, Kent Hovind gets out of prison and every atheist wants a piece of him. I understand that; I hate liars, I hate anyone who deceives even little old ladies and especially other people's children. So, of course I'd love to have the opportunity to get into it with Mister (not Doctor) Kent Hovind, as would every other atheist activist with a passion for science and a concern for truth. Understand though that this charlatan is every kind of fraud. He just wants to reestablish his racket. His schtick is to pretend to be more important than he is; we all know that his thesis was just as bogus as the PHD that he bought from a mail order catalog for about $100, he also claims to have taught high school science for about 15 years, hoping that folks will think that he has some verifiable connection to a high school somewhere (an actual school), but what I suspect is really the case is he may have preached to homeschooled kids at his house (which he used as a church sometimes). I can understand Atheist Podcast wanting to have this guy on to take him to task, but remember, he is a conman, a professional fraud. In his mind, he gains merit and financial supporters as a result of being "oppressed in the face of adversity", so go ahead and have him on, but only as a sideshow freak, someone to gawk at; show him the contempt he deserves. Don't treat him like an opponent, as if he had something to bring to the table.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Debating Dr Dunno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKw8K7o-vwY (August 4, 2015)

Love , Hate , Children , People

“Even using self determination we should establish a rule to help us gain validity. It is true that it is us who examine our conscience, but a prolonged education in the perception of values makes our conscience a better tool for decision. It is also very important to think of our action as being valid for all, as if everyone in our place should act this way.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Education , Way , Thinking , Decision

“I warmly second the advice of the wisest of men—"Don't be ambitious; don't be at all too desirous to success; be loyal and modest." Cut down the proud towering thoughts that you get into you, or see they be pure as well as high. There is a nobler ambition than the gaining of all California would be, or the getting of all the suffrages that are on the planet just now.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1860s, On The Choice Of Books (1866)

Men , Success

“England in all her wars has always gained one battle - the last!”

Eleftherios Venizelos (1864–1936) Greek politician

The World Crisis, The Aftermath : Chapter XVIII (Greek Tragedy), Churchill, Butterworth (1929), p. 381.

War

“I’m learning, Maia thought. They keep making mistakes and I keep getting stronger.
At this rate, someday I may actually gain control over my life.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 27 (p. 531)

Life , Learning

“There may not be a high-level purpose for humanity, but that doesn't mean we can't find inspiration in the world. I think there is a combination of psychological and environmental factors that combine to create various urges in humanity -- most importantly the urge to create, to contribute something to the world, to express your personal worldview and see how the world responds. Art doesn't happen in a vacuum, and if it were only for personal gain then nobody would ever release music to the public. The process changes you, and also changes the world itself, creating ripples of inspiration which flow between the artist and the listener.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Andrew Sega Shrine interview, 2011

World , Art , Music , Thinking

“I think Yvonne De Carlo was more famous than Lily. But I gained the younger audience through The Munsters.”

Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) Canadian-American actress, dancer, and singer

And it was a steady job.
"Yvonne De Carlo Reminds The World There Was Life Before Lily Munster" (1987)

Thinking

“To be a student of Stuck [1898 - 1900] sounded good. In reality, however, it was not half so splendid. Instead of coming to him with a sound mind I brought a thousand pains and many prejudices. In the realm of colour I found it hard to progress. Since the tone provided by mood predominated strongly in my mastery of form, I sought to find as much profit as possible here at least. And, in this respect, a great deal really was to be gained at Stuck's. Naturally I was not the only one, at this time, to be deficient in the realm of color. Later, in his monograph, Kandinsky passed a similar judgement on this school [of Stuck].”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1900), # 121, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1895 - 1902

Pain , School , Color , Mood

“I have observed that very often I gain access to a little secret that I have sought for a long time by way of a fortuitous encounter quite unrelated to the matter: for example six months I try to draw a camel in a way that satisfies me, and I make a thousand attempts without ever managing to do it. Then one day it is a drawing of a plump on the label of a pot of jam or the shadow thrown by an ink pot, or something or other equally unrelated to the matter that provides me with the solution. This kind of thing has happened so often that I have acquired the habit of always being on the outlook, and when I want to draw a camel I no longer limit myself, as I once did, to looking (only, fh) at camels..”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Source: posthumous, Jean Dubuffet, Works, writings Interviews, 2006, p. 44; quote in Dubuffet's letter to Jean Paulhan (letter 123)

Secret , Way , Time , Drawing

“I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To gain you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me
When I came.”

T. E. Lawrence book Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Dedicatory poem, to "S. A.", as written in the 1922 "Oxford text"; variant : "When we came" for "When I came" in the 1926 edition, and others.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)

Love , Men , Star , Freedom

“There were many reasons why we did not gain complete success at Arnhem. The following in my view were the main ones. First. The operation was not regarded at Supreme Headquarters as the spearhead of a major Allied movement on the northern flank designed to isolate, and finally to occupy, the Ruhr - the one objective in the West which the Germans could not afford to lose. There is no doubt in my mind that Eisenhower always wanted to give priority to the northern thrust and to scale down the southern one. He ordered this to be done, and he thought that it was being done. It was not being done. Second. The airborne forces at Arnhem were dropped too far away from the vital objective - the bridge. It was some hours before they reached it. I take the blame for this mistake. I should have ordered Second Army and 1st Airborne Corps to arrange that at least one complete Parachute Brigade was dropped quite close to the bridge, so that it could have been captured in a matter of minutes and its defence soundly organised with time to spare. I did not do so. Third. The weather. This turned against us after the first day and we could not carry out much of the later airborne programme. But weather is always an uncertain factor, in war and in peace. This uncertainty we all accepted. It could only have been offset, and the operation made a certainty, by allotting additional resources to the project, so that it became an Allied and not merely a British project. Fourth. The 2nd S. S. Panzer Corps was refitting in the Arnhem area, having limped up there after its mauling in Normandy. We knew it was there. But we were wrong in supposing that it could not fight effectively; its battle state was far beyond our expectation. It was quickly brought into action against the 1st Airborne Division.”

Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (1887–1976) British Army officer, Commander of Allied forces at the Battle of El Alamein

Concerning Operation Market Garden in his autobiography, 'The Memoirs of Field Marshal Montgomery' (1958)

War , Peace , Time , Success

“Just practice good, do good for others, without thinking of making yourself known so that you may gain reward. Really bring benefit to others, gaining nothing for yourself. This is the primary requisite for breaking free of attachments to the Self.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

III, 3
Shobogenzo Zuimonki (1238)

Thinking

“Grandstanding leaders never deliver, their fury mounts and mounts, and nevertheless they turn out every two years to return their right-wing heroes to office for a second, a third, a twentieth try. The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated then ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

Ibid. (p. 7).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

Age , Imagination , Strong , Country

“Here, in India, the problem is peculiar. Our trade tends steadily to expand and it is possible to demonstrate by means of statistics the increasing prosperity of the country generally. On the other hand, we in India know that the ancient handicrafts are decaying, that the fabrics for which India was renowned in the past are supplanted by the products of Western looms, and that our industries are not displaying that renewed vitality which will enable them to compete successfully in the home or the foreign market. The cutivator on the margin of subsistence remains a starveling cultivator, the educated man seeks Government employment or the readily available profession of a lawyer, while the belated artisan works on the lines marked out for him by his forefathers for a return that barely keeps body and soul together. It is said that India is dependent on agriculture and must always remain so. That may be so; but there can, I venture to think, be little doubt that the solution of the ever recurring famine problem is to be found not merely in the improvement of agriculture, the cheapening of loans, or the more equitable distribution of taxation, but still more in the removal from the land to industrial pursuits of a great portion of those, who, at the best, gain but a miserable subsistence, and on the slightest failure of the season are thrown on public charity. It is time for us in India to be up and doing; new markets must be found, new methods adopted and new handicrafts developed, whilst the educated unemployed, no less than the skilled and unskilled labourers, all those, in fact, whose precarious means of livelihood is a standing menace to the well-being of the State must find employment in reorganised and progressive industries It seems to me that what we want is more outside light and assistance from those interested in industries. Our schools should not be left entirely to officials who are either fully occupied with their other duties or whose ideas are prone, in the nature of things, to run in official grooves. I should like to see all those who "think" and “know" giving us their active assistance and not merely their criticism of our results. It is not Governments or forms of Government that have made the great industrial nations, but the spirit of the people and the energy of one and all working to a common end.”

Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (1884–1940) King of Mysore

On the occasion of the opening of Industrial and Arts Exhibition on 26 December 1903 in Madras (now known as Chennai) Modern_Mysore, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University, 26 November 2013, archive.org, 203 http://archive.org/stream/modernmysore035292mbp/modernmysore035292mbp_djvu.txt,
As ruler of the state

People , Education , School , Home

“I was particularly struck in this context by my honourable Friend, Mr K. S. Lo's concern at the decline in the enamelware industry as an example of the effect of lost advantages, as if this decline were a loss rather than a gain to the community. It has declined, I believe, because we have learned to use our resources of enterprise, capital and labour in other more profitable directions. That is progress. We would be in a sorry way if enamelware was still our fourth biggest industry.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

October 9, 1970, page 114.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Way , Communication , Learning , Loss

“A democratic government can gain strength and vitality only by constant scrutiny and the genuine fear that it may be thrown out of a vigilant public opinion.”

V. V. Giri (1894–1980) Indian politician and 4th president of India

Source: Presidents of India, 1950-2003, P.83

Fear

“Justification, in terms of the broadening of freedom, for any particular form of institution of property must be argued in terms of whether the losses caused by the restrictions imposed are greater or less than the gains derived from the elimination of costly conflict.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, Principles of economic policy, 1958, p. 119 cited in: Warren J. Samuels, James M. Buchanan (2007) The Legal-Economic Nexus. p. 54

Freedom , Loss

“Corporations now govern society, perhaps more than governments themselves do; yet ironically, it is their very power, much of which they have gained through economic globalization, that makes them vulnerable.”

Joel Bakan (1959) Canadian writer, musician, filmmaker and legal scholar

Source: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2004), Chapter 1, The Corporation's Rise To Dominance, p. 25

“America is a country with so much opportunity. After returning from a recent trip to West Africa, I gained a new perspective on what our country’s colors mean to me. Even in our worst times, we have so much more and give so much. Everywhere I went people wanted to know how they could get to America. On my way home I realized that I now looked at our flag differently. I thought about those that fought so hard for our independence; to give us the right to pursue our dreams.”

Katharine McPhee (1984) American pop singer, songwriter, and actress

Source: Up Close with Smash Star Katharine McPhee http://www.shape.com/celebrities/interviews/close-smash-star-katharine-mcphee (May 17, 2012)

People , Dreams , Color , Way

“I find myself frequently maintaining to any young passer-by upon whose attention I can force myself that a genuinely creative career must like a milking stool stand on three legs. There must be accident, there must be sweat, there must be dissatisfaction. That one must work hard is too obvious for comment here. That one must be endowed with native dissatisfaction is very nearly as obvious, for it is the engine that drives you: dissatisfaction with the world and the arts as you find them, dissatisfaction with your own best efforts to capture the uncapturable. What is not so obvious is the support which one must gain from accident, from those dispositions of wind and stars over which one has no control.”

Robert Ardrey book Plays of Three Decades

Plays of Three Decades: Thunder Rock / Jeb / Shadow of Heroes (1968)

World , Art , Star , Support

“What do individuals or groups of similarly hope to gain from participation in the affairs of the organization? Or, to use an awkward phrase we shall reiterate frequently, what are the uses to which they put the organisation?”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Source: 1960s, Authority, Goals and Prestige in a General Hospital, 1960, p. 16

Hope

“Your pa had seven years at sea, mostly in foreign parts.
You’ve heard him talk. He’s got a way about him, a way with words. He can make the temple bells tinkle for you, and you can just hear them big old elephants shuff-shuffling along, the priests callin’ folks to prayer and the like.
Your pa learned a sight of things most folks never even hear of. I’ve seen scholars back off an’ look at your pa, amazed.
You take these Injuns, now. You look at the way they live and you’ll say they don’t amount to much, but what are they thinkin’? What do they know? What memories do they have? They want different things, boy, and they consider different things important. Many a thing we’d give anything to know, they just take for granted.
Some of these Injuns, maybe all of them, they’re in tune with something. I don’t know what. But some of them have lost touch with it, and others are losin’ touch. Goin’ the white folks’ way might seem the likely thing to do, but maybe they lose as much as they gain.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Lonesome Gods (1983), Ch. 11

Way , Boy , Learning , Memory

“An example may clarify more precisely the relation between the psychologist and the anthropologist. If both of them investigate, say, the phenomenon of anger, the psychologist will try to grasp what the angry man feels, what his motives and the impulses of his will are, but the anthropologist will also try to grasp what he is doing. In respect of this phenomenon self-observation, being by nature disposed to weaken the spontaneity and unruliness of anger, will be especially difficult for both of them. The psychologist will try to meet this difficulty by a specific division of consciousness, which enables him to remain outside with the observing part of his being and yet let his passion run its course as undisturbed as possible. Of course this passion can then not avoid becoming similar to that of the actor, that is, though it can still be heightened in comparison with an unobserved passion its course will be different: there will be a release which is willed and which takes the place of the elemental outbreak, there will be a vehemence which will be more emphasized, more deliberate, more dramatic. The anthropologist can have nothing to do with a division of consciousness, since he has to do with the unbroken wholeness of events, and especially with the unbroken natural connection between feelings and actions; and this connection is most powerfully influenced in self-observation, since the pure spontaneity of the action is bound to suffer essentially. It remains for the anthropologist only to resign any attempt to stay outside his observing self, and thus when he is overcome by anger not to disturb it in its course by becoming a spectator of it, but to let it rage to its conclusion without trying to gain a perspective. He will be able to register in the act of recollection what he felt and did then; for him memory takes the place of psychological self-experience. … In the moment of life he has nothing else in his mind but just to live what is to be lived, he is there with his whole being, undivided, and for that very reason there grows in his thought and recollection the knowledge of human wholeness.”

Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian

Variant: An example may clarify more precisely the relation between the psychologist and the anthropologist. If both of them investigate, say, the phenomenon of anger, the psychologist will try to grasp what the angry man feels, what his motives and the impulses of his will are, but the anthropologist will also try to grasp what he is doing. In respect of this phenomenon self-observation, being by nature disposed to weaken the spontaneity and unruliness of anger, will be especially difficult for both of them. The psychologist will try to meet this difficulty by a specific division of consciousness, which enables him to remain outside with the observing part of his being and yet let his passion run its course as undisturbed as possible. Of course this passion can then not avoid becoming similar to that of the actor, that is, though it can still be heightened in comparison with an unobserved passion its course will be different: there will be a release which is willed and which takes the place of the elemental outbreak, there will be a vehemence which will be more emphasized, more deliberate, more dramatic. The anthropologist can have nothing to do with a division of consciousness, since he has to do with the unbroken wholeness of events, and especially with the unbroken natural connection between feelings and actions; and this connection is most powerfully influenced in self-observation, since the pure spontaneity of the action is bound to suffer essentially. It remains for the anthropologist only to resign any attempt to stay outside his observing self, and thus when he is overcome by anger not to disturb it in its course by becoming a spectator of it, but to let it rage to its conclusion without trying to gain a perspective. He will be able to register in the act of recollection what he felt and did then; for him memory takes the place of psychological self-experience. … In the moment of life he has nothing else in his mind but just to live what is to be lived, he is there with his whole being, undivided, and for that very reason there grows in his thought and recollection the knowledge of human wholeness.
Source: What is Man? (1938), pp. 148-149

Life , Feeling , Motivation , Nature

“Every good cause gained a victory when the Union troops were triumphant. Our final victory was the triumph of religion, of virtue, of knowledge…. During those four years, whatever our motives, whatever our lives, we were fighting on God’s side. We were doing His work. What would this country have been if we had failed?”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Diary (27 October 1883)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

God , Religion , Motivation , Knowledge

“Inside Britain there is a parallel threat from the Marxist collectivist totalitarians too. Small in number, those anti-democratic forces have gained great power through the trades union movement. Just to state that fact is to be accused of 'union-bashing'—often by people who know it to be true. Such people are to be found in the Conservative, Liberal and Labour Parties. Their politics may be different but such people share the morality of Laval and Pétain…they are willing not only to tolerate evil, but to excuse it…and to profit by so doing…Both Jim Prior and Keith Joseph know that George Ward and Grunwick are not perfect, nor was Czechoslovakia perfect in 1938. But if Ward and Grunwick are destroyed by the red fascists, then, as in 1938, we will have to ask, whose turn is it next? Yes, it is like 1938. We can all see the evil, but the doctrine of appeasement is still to be heard.”

Norman Tebbit (1931) English politician

Speech in Chingford on the Grunwick dispute (12 September, 1977).
Tebbit, pp. 194-5.

People , Evil , Perfection

“We [his art-friend & painter Morris Louis and Noland himself] were interested in Pollock but could gain no lead from him. He was too personal. But Frankenthaler showed us a way – a way to think about and use, color..”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

from: Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska; Thames and Hudson 1990, p. 194

Art , Color , Way , Thinking

“Russia is no longer a military threat. But I do think we have a responsibility to try to enhance stability and democracy. And only a democratic country can be stable … It's reasonable to allow time for the development of democracy … But Putin's Russia is moving in the wrong direction … many seem to think that one should tolerate some 'failures' since 'stability' has gained ground. I believe this kind of realpolitik is dangerous. Stability can only result from a genuine democracy, rule of law and respect of human rights.”

Heidi Hautala (1955) Finnish politician

As quoted in "Putin's shadow falls over Finland" by Simon Tisdall, in The Guardian (14 June 2006)

Law , Democracy , Failure , Thinking

“The Spirit of Rotary is to voluntarily improve the lot of their fellow human beings because it is the ultimate calling in life. Not for reward of for personal gain, but for the satisfaction of having made a positive difference to someone else. How different would life be if those of us with more advantages could all practice these virtues? This would be a society where the strong would be just and the weak secure. It is an ideal that we can all work towards.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Speech to the Lautoka Rotary Club (Centenary Dinner), 12 March 2005 http://www.fiji.gov.fj/publish/printer_4326.shtml.

Life , Strong , Personality

“In fact, all the additional knowledge gained by an irrationally constituted society may but enlarge and enhance the powers of death and destruction.”

Paul A. Baran (1909–1964) American Marxist economist

Source: The Political Economy Of Growth (1957), Chapter Eight, The Steep Ascent, p. 299

Death , Knowledge

“I am not working for failure, but for success, and for a real gain, and I must go the way to get it. I am sure the putting manhood suffrage in the Bill is not the way to get it. This has been done by the Chartists, and by the Complete Suffragists, but what has become of their Bills?”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to Joseph Sturge (2 February 1858), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), p. 270.
1850s

Way , Failure , Success

“What I would say to all my leftwing friends in Europe: don’t try to fake the populace. Stand for your principles. Be straight. Be pro-refugee. Be pro-European. We’re gaining momentum in the polls. And I think that’s the message we have to send to Europe. You can stop populism.”

Jesse Klaver (1986) Dutch politician and trade union leader

a statement during electoral campaign in 2017, quoted by The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/15/dutch-elections-greenleft-jesse-klaver

Thinking

“The relationship of the big Wall Street banks to the high frequency traders, when you think about it, was a bit like the relationship of the entire society to the big Wall Street banks. When things went well, the HFT guys took most of the gains; when things went badly, the HFT guys vanished and the banks took the losses.”

Michael Lewis book Flash Boys

Source: Flash Boys (2014), p. 264

Guy , Thinking , Loss

“The mark of a capitalistic society is that resources are owned and allocated by such nongovernmental organizations as firms, households, and markets. Resource owners increase productivity through cooperative specialization and this leads to the demand for economic organizations which facilitate cooperation. When a lumber mill employs a cabinetmaker, cooperation between specialists is achieved within a firm, and when a cabinetmaker purchases wood from a lumberman, the cooperation takes place across markets (or between firms). Two important problems face a theory of economic organization—to explain the conditions that determine whether the gains from specialization and cooperative production can better be obtained within an organization like the firm, or across markets, and to explain the structure of the organization.”

Harold Demsetz (1930–2019) American economist

Source: Production, information costs, and economic organization. 1972, p. 777, Lead paragraph

Problem

“Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.”

Joseph Roux (1834–1905) French poet

Part 4, XXVIII (1886)
Meditations of a Parish Priest (1866)

Wisdom

“The rapid establishment of Christianity must therefore have been from the conviction which those who embraced it, had of its "Truth and power unto salvation." Christianity at first spread itself amongst the most enlightened nations of the earth - in those places where human learning was in its greatest perfection; and, by the force of the evidence which attended it, amongst such men it gained an establishment. It has been justly observed, that "it happened very providentially to the honour of the Christian religion, that it did not take its rise in the dark illiterate ages of the world, but at a time when arts and sciences were t their height, and when there were men who made it the business of their lives to search after truth and lift the several opinions of the philosophers and wise men, concerning the duty, the end, and chief happiness of reasonable creatures." Both the learned and the ignorant alike embraced its doctrines; the learned were not likely to be deceived in the proofs which were offered; and the same cause undoubtedly operated to produce the effect upon each. But an immediate conversion of the bulk of mankind, can arise only from some proofs of a ddivine authority offering themselves immediately to the senses; the preaching of any new doctrine, if lest to operate only by its own force, would go but a very little way towards the immediate conversion of the gnorant, who have no principle of action but what arises from habit, and whose powers of reasoning are insufficient to correct their errors. When Mahomet was required by his followers to work a miracle for their conviction, he always declined it; he was too cautious to trust to an experiment, the success of which was scarcely whithin the bounds of probablity; he amused his followers with prtended visions, which with the aid afterwards of the civil and military powr; and as the accomplishment of that event was by a few obscure persons, who founded their pretentions upon authority from heaven, we are next to consider, what kind of proofs of their divine commission they offered to the world; and whether they themselves could have been deceived, or mankind could have been deludded by them.”

Samuel Vince (1749–1821) British mathematician, astronomer and physicist

Source: The Credibility of Christianity Vindicated, p. 20; As quoted in " Book review http://books.google.nl/books?id=52tAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA261," in The British Critic, Volume 12 (1798). F. and C. Rivington. p. 261-262

Men , Truth , Age , World

“People will observe you to see
How well you have observed.
The man who only observes himself however never gains
Knowledge of men. He is too anxious
To hide himself from himself. And nobody is
Cleverer than he himself is.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"Speech to Danish working-class actors on the art of observation" [Rede an dänische Arbeiterschauspieler über die Kunst der Beobachtung] (1934), from The Messingkauf Poems, published in Versuche 14 (1955); trans. John Willett in Poems, 1913-1956, pp. 235-236
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

Men , People , Knowledge

“When Donald Rumsfeld, a practical imperialist if ever there was one, took over the Pentagon, he commissioned a study of how ancient empires maintained their hegemony. Might he more profitably study how they lost all they had gained?”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.VII The Way They Went: Greco-Roman Meets Judeo-Christian

Study

“Unfortunate is he who cannot gain a few sincere friends during his life and more unfortunate is the one who has gained them and then lost them”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

through his deeds
Nahj al-Balagha

Life , Sincerity

“I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the farms, is not the world I think. I observe that difference, and shall observe it. One day I shall know the value and law of this discrepance. But I have not found that much was gained by manipular attempts to realize the world of thought.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Experience

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience

World , Law , Thinking

“The free market tide has now receded. In its place has come state capitalism, a system in which the state functions as the leading economic actor and uses markets primarily for political gain.”

Ian Bremmer (1969) American political scientist

"State Capitalism Comes of Age," http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64948/ian-bremmer/state-capitalism-comes-of-age Foreign Affairs (May/June 2009).

“Too many for the fruit cut down the tree,
And find their gain in world-wide misery.”

Francesco Dall'Ongaro (1808–1873) Italian poet, playwright and librettist

Troppi taglian la pianta per i frutti,
E traggono lor pro dal mal di tutti.
Stornelli Politici, "Gaetano Semenza", II.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 428.

World , Tree

“The Dutch Company, actuated solely by the spirit of gain, and viewing their [Javan] subjects, with less regard or consideration than a West India planter formerly viewed a gang upon his estate, because the latter had paid the purchase money of human property, which the other had not, employed all the existing machinery of despotism to squeeze from the people their utmost mite of contribution, the last dregs of their labor, and thus aggravated the evils of a capricious and semi-barbarous Government, by working it with all the practised ingenuity of politicians, and all the monopolizing selfishness of traders.”

Stamford Raffles (1781–1826) British statesman who founded Singapore

T.S. Raffles, The History of Java (London 1871), book 1, pg. 168. Here as quoted in the New-York Daily Tribune, June 25, 1853 by Karl Marx https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/25.htm.

Money , People , Evil , Selfishness

“One takeaway from this astonishing presidential election is that fake news is gaining ground, empowering nuts and undermining our democracy.”

Nicholas D. Kristof (1959) journalist, author, columnist

Lies in the Guise of News in the Trump Era (November 12, 2016)

Democracy

“Unfortunately, the process of gaining money in [a man’s] life usually meant alienating the wife in his life. Sometimes this leads to a legal divorce, but more often to a psychological divorce. Which is why a survey of doctors’ wives reported in Medical/Mrs. Found the doctors’ wives harboring hostility that was ‘stunning to behold.’ Yet the wives remained married to the doctors. Why? More than anything else, the wives said, they wanted security from marriage… the men, then, were often prostitutes to an illusion of emotional security. At least their wives had the reality of economic security.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 203.

Life , Men , Money , Hostility

“I ask for the movement to continue, for the movement to grow, because last week I got a phone call from Altoona, Pennsylvania, and my election gave somebody else, one more person, hope. And after all, that's what this is all about. It's not about personal gain, not about ego, not about power — it's about giving those young people out there in the Altoona, Pennsylvanias, hope. You gotta give them hope.”

Harvey Milk (1930–1978) American politician who became a martyr in the gay community

From a tape recording (1977-11-18) to be played in the event of his assassination, quoted in Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (1982), p. 277

People , Hope , Personality

“I have always been haunted by the feeling that the painter has much to gain from making use of the forces that tend to work against his action”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Source: posthumous, Jean Dubuffet, Works, writings Interviews, 2006, p. 9

Feeling

“Methinks God has punish'd the Avaritious as he often punishes sinners, in their own way, in the ver sin itself: the thrist of gain was their crime, that thrist continued became their punishment and ruin. As for the few who have the good fortune to remain with half of what they imagined they had (among whom is your humble servantl, I would have them sensible of their felicity, and convinced of the truth of old Hesiod's maxim, who, after half his estate was swallowed by the Directors of those days, resolv'd, that half to be more than the whole.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

In his letter to Atterbury Bishop of Rochester. Sept. 23. 1720.

God , Truth , Way , Imagination

“Today's banalities apparently gain in profundity if one states that the wisdom of the past, for all its virtues, belongs to the past. The arrogance of those who come later preens itself with the notion that the past is dead and gone. … The modern mind can no longer think thought, only can locate it in time and space. The activity of thinking decays to the passivity of classifying.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 1

Wisdom , Thinking , Time , Past

“I believe the British government forms the best model the world ever produced, and such has been its progress in the minds of the many, that this truth gradually gains ground. This government has for its object public strength and individual security. It is said with us to be unattainable. All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government. Can a democratic assembly, who annually revolve in the mass of the people, be supposed steadily to pursue the public good?”

Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) Founding Father of the United States

Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention, v. 1, p. 299. (June 19, 1787)
Debates of the Federal Convention (1787)

God , People , Truth , World

“Animals themselves cannot plead their cause, and those who plead it for them have no obvious financial or other selfish interest in the issue, although many may have “vested” their emotions in it. When we turn to special gain from maintaining existing practices, special loss if they were to be changed, we find a large number of groups whose views might be discounted. Butchers, furriers, hunters, cattlemen, chicken farmers, scientific experimenters on animals would, unless compensated, all have to suffer significant personal loss if we were to change our practices. They cannot therefore be expected to see the moral issue without the distortion of special interest. The scientists might claim that in their case their own interest coincides with a universal human interest, but I think the butcher and the furrier could make a similar claim[. ]”

Annette Baier (1929–2012) New Zealand philosopher

Source: Knowing Our Place in the Animal World, pp. 63-64

Thinking , Suffering , Universe , Change

“Competition with women is almost always a net loss of honor for a man. Men don't consider competition between men and women to be "apples to apples." I don't think women do either… What does a man have to gain? He shows no courage by entering the ring with a woman. He is expected to win. If he does, his victory is shallow and unsavory. He gains no honor in beating a woman- the idea is offensive even to a modern man's vestigial sense of chivalry.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

Pg 75
A Sky Without Eagles (2014)

Women , Men , Idea , Courage

“Your Senate Committee on Finance conducted two budget hearings on this matter, Mr. President, to gain a more thorough knowledge on the various projects involved in this measure. All national government agencies and government-owned or controlled corporations that shall implement the said projects served as resource persons for the consecutive hearings.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the Supplemental Appropriations for FY 2014

Knowledge , Personality

““We continue to negotiate the treaty, endlessly apparently, to everyone’s continuing loss.” He smiled wryly. “You know how such things go. We no longer debate to gain real advantage but to come away from the table having created the perception that we have somehow won. ‘Politics,’ this is called.””

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: World Without End (1995), Chapter 28 (p. 389)

Smile , Loss

“There are some sordid minds, formed of slime and filth, to whom interest and gain are what glory and virtue are to superior souls; they feel no other pleasure but to acquire money.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

Il y a des âmes sales, pétries de boue et d’ordure, éprises du gain et de l’intérêt, comme les belles âmes le sont de la gloire et de la vertu; capables d’une seule volupté, qui est celle d’acquérir ou de ne point perdre.
Aphorism 58
Les Caractères (1688), Des biens de fortune

Money , Pleasure , Feeling , Soul

“I do not believe that we can make progress in European appeasement if we allow the impression to gain currency abroad that we yield to constant pressure. I am certain in my own mind that progress depends above all on the temper of the nation, and that temper must find expression in a firm spirit. This spirit I am confident is there. Not to give voice it is I believe fair neither to this country nor to the world.”

Anthony Eden (1897–1977) British Conservative politician, prime minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1938/feb/21/personal-explanations to the House of Commons (21 February 1938) detailing his resignation from the government as Foreign Secretary

World , Confidence , Dependency , Country

“Any act often repeated soon forms a habit : and habit allowed, steadily gains in strength. — At first it may be but as the spider’s web, easily broken through, but if not resisted it soon binds us with chains of steel.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 212.

“Interpretations of the past are subject to change in response to new evidence, new questions asked of the evidence, new perspectives gained by the passage of time.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

James M. McPherson. "Revisionist Historians" https://web.archive.org/web/20040623155609/http://historians.org/Perspectives/Issues/2003/0309/0309pre1.cfm (September 2003), Perspectives, American Historical Association.
2000s

Question , Change , Time , Past

“…there will be no peace in the tormented world, only a programmed and systematic series of wars and calamities—until the plotters have gained their objective: an exhausted world willing to submit to a planned Marxist economy and total and meek enslavement— in the name of peace.”

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

"Ceremony of the Innocent: A novel", first edition Doubleday, 1976, p. 218
1970s-

War , World , Peace

“Harmonious interstate relations will be guided by the paradigm of Symbiotic Realism that stresses the importance of absolute rather than relative gains.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.28

“As we search as a nation for constructive ways to challenge racism and white supremacy, it is absolutely essential that progressive female voices gain a hearing.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Killing Rage: Ending Racism (1995)

Way , Search

“The Soviet Union's propaganda clearly wishes to use public opinion in this country to get the West to reduce its own arms while doing nothing themselves. In this way they would gain nuclear superiority. This is simply not on.”

James Callaghan (1912–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; 1976-1979

Speech at Cardiff (25 May 1983), quoted in Tim Jones, "Callaghan defends deterrent", The Times (26 May 1983), p. 1. This was during the 1983 general election in which the Labour Party had a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament.
Post-Prime Ministerial

Way , Country

“The youth, who pants to gain the amorous prize,
Forgets that Heaven with all-discerning eyes
Surveys the secret heart; and when desire
Has, in possession, quenched its short-lived fire,
The devious winds aside each promise bear,
And scatter all his solemn vows in air!”

John Hoole (1727–1803) British translator

Book X, line 24
Translations, Orlando Furioso of Ludovico Ariosto (1773)

Secret , Youth , Heart , Forgetting

“I went vegan for the animals. I love them all and I don't want to eat my friends. I know it sounds cheesy but it's true. I started promoting it on my social media and I wasn't expecting people from all different areas of the world reaching out to me, saying how much I inspire them … My whole family is vegan and it's really fun to get creative in the kitchen while staying healthy, and just have fun with it. Veganism can be really healthy, but it can also be really unhealthy if you don't do it right. And it's not like I don't have cheat days with vegan junk food or vegan sweets, but it's important to stay on the program. … It was surprising how easy it is to be vegan. I was vegetarian my whole life prior so the transition was relatively easy for me to cut out dairy. When I cut out the dairy I noticed I had more energy. I also lost some fat and gained muscle!”

Tia Blanco (1997)

"3 Ways to Go Vegan with Tia Blanco" http://www.worldsurfleague.com/posts/237346/3-ways-to-go-vegan-with-tia-blanco, interview with World Surf League (February 2, 2017).

Love , Life , People , World

Quotes about gain page 12

Quotes about gain
page 12